A pair of prominent commodities hedge funds have reaped rich returns in 2010.

Clive Capital's eponymous fund and the Merchant Commodity Fund are both up by double-digits, well ahead of the average hedge fund. The returns are particularly impressive for Merchant, headed by former Cargill traders Michael Coleman and Doug King, as the US$1.4 billion fund was down almost 20% through the first four months of the year and stayed in the red until it posted a 12.7% return in September.

The fund, which has enjoyed positive returns for seven straight years, is up 14.4% this year, despite losing 4.6% last month, Bloomberg News reports. The fund blamed the setback, its biggest drop since April, on agriculture trading, calling November "the most volatile month in commodities for over a year."

The US$4 billion Clive Fund is up 11.3% this year after returned 0.56% last month.

From the current issue of

We are accustomed to splitting trading into technical and fundamental buckets. Both involve crunching data; one set includes market fundamentals and the other pure price data. Alternative data is a third bucket that is gaining traction.